Stream on Apple TV (trailer)
Spoiler warning: Medium (but most readers should be familiar with the Camp Fire by now)
Entertainment: 5, Impact: 4
Most people reading this will have memories of being on a school bus. But I’m willing to bet relatively few of those memories involve navigating a blazing inferno through gridlock traffic, deadly power lines, and mobs of desperate residents.
That is, unless you were a student at Ponderosa Elementary, a school in the town of Paradise, California that was one of the more than 18,000 structures that burnt down during the devastating 2018 Camp Fire, which to this day is the deadliest wildfire in California history. The plight of these 22 stranded students, whose parents or relatives weren’t able to pick them up before evacuation orders went into effect, is the provocative set up for The Lost Bus, a new Apple TV thriller directed by Paul Greengrass, the filmmaker behind other dramatized true stories like Bloody Sunday (2002), United 93 (2006), and Captain Phillips (2013).
The Lost Bus is based on the book Paradise: One Town’s Struggle to Survive an American Wildfire by Lizzie Johnson and focuses on the heroic real-life stories of bus driver Kevin McKay (played by Matthew McConaughey) and teacher Mary Ludwig (played by America Ferrara).
I went through the full range of emotions and reactions while watching this film, few of which had to do with the actual outcome of the students since the promo for the film made it pretty clear they survived.
At the beginning, my main thought was “Wow, wildfires can spread really quick!” as I watched how strong winds and dangerously dry conditions allowed a small rural fire to literally jump across bridges and canyons to reach more inhabited areas. The Camp Fire seemed like a perfect storm that no amount of resources or advance planning could have prevented – only mitigated.
For much of the middle of the film, I was in awe at the calm and poise exhibited by the emergency response team, even as everything was falling apart around them. Everyone from the local firefighters to the specialist Cal Fire team was working in unison to try to control the wildfires and save as many people as possible.
By the end, I was ready to anoint Kevin McKay’s character as the best cinematic bus driver since probably Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock in Speed. Even Ms. Frizzle would be proud, and she’s driven a school bus through a human’s digestive tract!
Polycrisis
But the thought that’s stayed with me most since watching The Lost Bus is whether a Hollywood-style treatment of a climate disaster might change how people act or what they believe about climate change.
Anand Giridharadas certainly hopes so, writing in The.Ink how “The Lost Bus grabs you by the lapels and urges you to stop thinking of climate change as a tomorrow problem. You are living in it now. Or if you aren’t, somebody is.” This makes the film something you can “text your MAGA uncle and neighbor about” since it provides “a stealthy, accessible way that people who don’t think a lot about climate can be made to think about it.”
It especially helps that The Lost Bus follows a familiar storyline. High stakes. Impossible odds. Breath-taking cinematography. Throw in a few likeable characters and the slight hint of a romance, and you have all the makings of a Hollywood blockbuster.
The fact that it’s based on a true story makes it all the more compelling for viewers and critics alike.
But The Lost Bus isn’t just a story about climate change, or about the dangers of wildfires. Nor is it the story of one determined bus driver, or the people of Paradise whose homes and lives were destroyed. It’s each of these stories thrust together, overlapping and cascading into each other like waves hitting the shoreline. It’s a story about a polycrisis – how one crisis is interwoven with and amplified by other crises. The end result of a wildfire is usually what gets most of the headlines, but perhaps it’s the build up we should be paying more attention to.
“Damn fools”
Throughout the whole film, I clocked just one reference to climate change: “Every year the fires get bigger, and there’s more of them. We’re being damn fools. That’s the truth.”
This line came from the Cal Fire Division chief, who was speaking at a press conference about the Camp Fire and the decision to abort all firefighting and instead focus on saving lives.
We’re left to wonder who the fools are. The people who insist on continuing to live in wildfire-prone areas? Federal and local authorities for not providing enough assistance to fight the wildfires and help people recover? Modern society for causing the climate crisis?
Maybe it’s all of the above. Or maybe it depends on the perspective of the person watching the film.
A firefighter or EMT might be frustrated at the lack of resources. Residents might be frustrated at the lack of economic opportunities elsewhere. Parents might be irate at the fragility of the communications network during times of crisis. Teachers might be wondering how they’re supposed to protect children from natural disasters, guns and online bullying – all while barely making enough to get by.
Children might be overwhelmed by the sheer impossibility of it all. Utility workers, like those at Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E), might be thinking what more they can do to keep their transmission towers and power lines from sparking electrical fires. Policymakers might be looking for how to get the private sector to bear more of the costs of wildfire prevention and recovery.
Investors might be debating whether PG&E is worth keeping in their portfolios, especially given evidence of repeated lapses in safety compliance that led to a $13.5 billion settlement to wildfire victims, a historic bankruptcy, and convictions for 84 counts of involuntary manslaughter. Big banks and insurance firms might be rethinking their relationships with companies like PG&E, which are directly exposed to climate risks.
Each of these reactions is valid and meaningful, but for many the most prevailing memories of the Camp Fire are some combination of “that was horrific” and “hopefully it won’t happen again.” But we know it’ll happen again!
Since 2018, there have been eight wildfires that burned more acres than the Camp Fire, although none came close to the number of deaths (82) or destroyed structures (18,000+). The LA wildfires of January 2025 were technically 14 separate wildfires, but the two biggest – the Palisades Fire (12 deaths, 6,800+ destroyed structures) and the Eaton Fire (19 deaths, 9,400+ destroyed structures) – still don’t come close.
An AI-powered observer might look at these stats and conclude that we’ve become very good at saving lives and buildings, but we are largely powerless when it comes to stopping or even controlling these fires of mass destruction.
Inevitably, that means more people will lose their homes and communities. More people will be breathing in toxic air for days or even weeks on end. And greenhouse gases will continue to pollute our atmosphere, trapping everyone in the world in a heat box that is getting better each day at suffocating us.
I worry that The Lost Bus will convince everyone that they’ll be one of the lucky few that gets saved from the brink of disaster. That even if they lose their home, they can rebuild. Even if they suffer serious burns or breathing issues, the healthcare system will help them recover.
People who keep doing the same thing and expecting different results are often characterized as insane. But there’s nothing irrational about people trying to survive by whatever means are available to them – what’s insane is a system that expects them to.
